A new Guinness World Record was set over the weekend, as 999 players joined a single browser frag-fest, allegedly lag-free, to battle it out in the "biggest first-person shooter ever made", Man vs. Machine.

The attempt was monitored by Guinness World Records 2012 "Gamer Edition" and recorded 999 players at one time slogging it out in pure team deathmatch carnage. 999 was the peak, though developer MuchDifferent says that for the duration of the epic battle, they averaged around 980-odd players until the Machines finally took control of the battlefield and defeated man.
MuchDifferent, who provided both the game and the new server technology, was at first overwhelmed by the huge number of people trying to join this one-time event. CEO, Christian Lönnholm explains: “It was amazing. We did not imagine the amount of interest that this game would generate, so the system went down shortly after we had reached the peak of 999 players. Within minutes we were able to adjust it, and the battle continued for about two hours more. It was a blast!”
The team were utilising a new server technology called PikkoServer they developed in-house, that showed it can deliver the strain-intensive goods.

"We believe this technology can be applied to just about any game engine used today," added Lönnholm. "So, our goal now is to make this technology available to developers worldwide. Stay tuned!”